The night had passed and the moon set while I was in reverie. Now we were nearing the encampment, but I could not slow my horse to a walk to prolong the vigil. I must spur him into a canter and finally to a headlong race with his own shadow, so we could arrive at the tents in a drum-roll of hooves and with yells befitting only a rider at breakneck pace. For the desert had brought forth a new wonder, and the Beni Kabir would never forgive an unsplendid return; and bards living and yet unborn would spurn the tale.
When Isabel saw the distant tents, she sat up and asked me to put her on my croup.
"Is it fitting that a princess ride behind a slave?" I asked.
"I was the captive of the desert and you took me from it, so now I am your captive—until you yield me up."
"That won't be long."
It was no feat for a Bedouin and a Tuareg girl to change positions on a galloping horse. When I let him run, meanwhile whooping like an Indian on the warpath, she adjusted her robe, pressed one hand into my short ribs to help keep her balance, and rode with her left arm akimbo, no doubt a ceremonious position among the Tuareg. I wished I could see her face as we swept by my wide-eyed tribesmen by the cooking fires. I could be sure she would show them only her beautiful profile, as African royalty were wont to do since the first carvings on stone, and her expression would be serene.
Circling the row of thornbush kraals where horses neighed and hounds barked, I pulled up before Suliman's pavillon. Timor and I dismounted and stood at our horseheads; he rose from his carpet, but did not speak until the whole encampment had gathered. Then he addressed Timor first.
"What word, Timor ibn Fareth?"
"None, O Sheik. But the slave Omar has word of what he found on the desert."
"Omar, you have my leave to speak."
I recited the girl's history as she had given it to me, speaking eloquently and punctuating with a finger in the palm of my left hand.
"There is no God but Allah," Suliman proclaimed when I was through. "Izubahil, the slave Omar, your finder, told that you speak Arabic. First, I offer you the shelter of the tents of Beni Kabir and the protection of my scimitar, and of the rifles, pricked and primed, of my followers."
The girl replied with the stately, "Dakkil-ak ya Shaykhe!"
"It is a great wonder that you were found, and it would not be so save by the will of Allah, and it comes to me that thereby your daughterhood to Mahound, Emir of the Kel Innek, is proven in all men's sight, the stars of heaven bearing witness, and the evil charge he made has been flung into his teeth; and if we rode swiftly and overtook his caravan, he would acknowledge you before the elders, or they would leave him on the desert impaled on his own spear, for a lying dog." Suliman paused and caught his breath. "But it may be you would not have us do so."
"Nay, O Sheik, I would not."
"For a delicate maiden"—but she did not look delicate to me, sitting straight as a lance on my gelding—"and a princess to be so cruelly cast forth by her own sire for the sake of a base suspicion could turn her love for him to hate. More, she would well fear some other deadly stroke at his lightest whim."
"Yea, that is so."
"What is your wish, Izubahil? Speak plainly without fear."
"I wish to remain with you, O Sheik, and your people, until such time as I wed; then by your leave, I will go with my husband to the tents of the Kel Innek and gather up my camels and donkeys and sheep, and the men of my mother's household who are my servants, and bring them here. For then my father Mahound will not dare deny me, I being no longer his daughter, but a wife of the Beni Kabir, and Allah had spared me not for a day but until I have taken a noble husband, which will indeed cast his lie into his teeth."
"There's no harm in that," the sheik replied, dropping from the classic Arabic of Oman to the dialect. "And I wish my only son, Selim, were old enough to become your husband when the time is ripe, but lo, he has seen only eight suns and may not wed for eight suns more. Even so, there are many sons of Beni Kabir, warriors and riders second to none, of good name, and tall, and valiant, who'll vie for your beauteous hand. And meanwhile you will be in the care of the widow of an elder who has no sons and her female slave."
"It is a great mercy, and also I entreat—"
Isabel paused, and I thought her eyes glimmered in the bursting light.
"Speak, my daughter."
"I ask not to be shut away from Omar, except as is meet, since it was his kismet to find me on the desert, and therefore we've made bond, and he stands closest to me among all your followers, even though he's a slave."
"Truly, he was the instrument of your saving and of our present happiness, and he may be to you as an older brother, as long as is meet. If he were my slave instead of a slave of another, I would set him free. If he were my son of the blood instead of my heart, I would do more than that. But as it is, he or I can do nothing." The effect of this on the throng was instantaneous and profound. The Arabs and especially the Bedouins are an emotional and ,m-lo native people; and suddenly a fact that they all knew, that S took for granted, was seen in a new light. I stood before the sheik's tent, holding the horse that had borne in from the desert this beautiful castaway, a maiden straight as a lotus flower just ere comes to bloom; of paler color than they; more graced than their daughters; only a little younger than many brides; more royal in their eyes than any fabled queen of Frankistan or the saki of he Egyptian Khedive. Kismet—or Allah—had moved in my behalf, they knew, but only so far. Now the new-risen sun cast its glaring av upon us far off the sand was stirred to hissing life by the morning breeze; about us stretched the desert, the beginning and the end of all things. I did not turn and look behind me, but I saw Suliman's eyes brim with tears, and I knew all eyes that looked upon us were the same.
Their sudden awareness of immutable fate and the wave of sorrow sweeping over us all undermined Isabel and breached the wonderful gallantry that was her last bulwark against exhaustion. I saw her sway and start to topple. Catching her in my arms, I carried her and lower on the carpet at Suliman's feet. Then rose a vibrant voice, chanting high and clear.
"O Suliman ibn Ali!"
"Ah, Ishmael ibn Abdul!"
At once the bard began his song, the words extemporaneous, et to a melody I had heard only once before, when Ishmael sang of a young tribesman who had been killed defending his mare against a lion.
Whose tracks are these that lead into the waste?
Omar looked at them and pondered.
Who has ridden from the southward into the great thirst?
Omar saddled his horse at midnight and rode forth.
With him rode his mullah Timor, wise in the ways of the desert.
Fast rode Omar, his shadow short beneath him, the white moon overhead.
Fast followed Timor, and the hooves drummed the clay.
What will Omar behold, what wonder hath Allah done?
Fast sped the beautiful horses, fast the hours.
Till they came to the desert's secret heart!
What is this that Omar spies, far away in the moonlight?
Lo, it is a maiden bound fast to her horse's back.
Now he has cut her bonds away.